


it's lonely at the top

by writingismypoison



Series: a second glance-character studies [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Gen, Shiro-centric, fun fun fun, hmm, this isnt really based on canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 16:10:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10857471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingismypoison/pseuds/writingismypoison
Summary: Shiro was on a podium, something untouchable, something no one could ever reach and no one tried.But what if it wasn't his choice to be up there?---





	it's lonely at the top

**Shiro** could never rest.

He constantly had to be on edge, ready for anything and everything. It was what everyone expected him to do, he couldn't let them down. He had already let them down enough, disappearing for a month and forcing the crew to use their energy into finding him instead of fighting the Galra. They had only saved two planets in the time that he was gone. _Two planets._ They did that many in at least a week. They weren't even able to form Voltron in the first battle, since Black didn't want another Paladin, and Red didn't want someone else even more.

He still had the gall to feel a little proud when he heard that. _Black was_ his _lion_. He immediately forced the feeling to go away, since if Black hadn't accepted Allura in the end, they would probably all be dead. How could he be so _selfish_? He bottled up his feelings of self-loathing, because now wasn't a good time to get to this deep into thought. What if someone needed him? Ignoring those feelings was the best option.

\---

When people first meet him, they always assume he’s a leader figure, someone to look to up to for answers and orders. Maybe it's because of how he looks, or the way he carries himself. He's never asked to be put in this role, but society has shaped him and forced him to a box, a position he never wanted. But what can he do? He's too far in. Backing out now would mean millions of deaths on his hands, and he knows he couldn't handle it.

He couldn't even handle the blood on his hands right now.

But he has to push it all back, be the leader he was told to be. Slacking only means more death, and more nightmares. More nightmares means less sleep, and then he won't be able to support any of the team when they need him. He can't have that happen.

Stop.

This isn't about him. So what if he had nightmares? He knows that the rest of his team did too. There were many nights where he would be patrolling the halls, and find Pidge up, staring at a painting she had brought from Earth, or working on some code. Or he would find Keith and Lance sparing on the training deck at 3 am, bags under their eyes. He’s even seen Hunk in the kitchen or down by the archive, using a translator to read altean manuals on engineering the ship. On nights when he finds all of them up, he gathers them to the rec room and they either watch altean TV, or play the video game Lance and Pidge got. Sometimes they would be so exhausted that they would just have a cuddle pile and sleep. Shiro didn't want to make any of them uncomfortable and ask them to do that every night, but he always slept the best surrounded by his “space family”, as he had come to know them by.

On very rare nights, when he was absolutely sure no one was awake, he would go down to the observatory and think about his feelings. He knew it wasn't healthy for him to bottle it all up. He would reflect on things that he had filed away in his brain, bring them back out and think about all this missed shots, all the lives lost, and mourn. Never would he go that far into his thoughts. If he did, he knows he wouldn't be right in the head.

Shiro’s class was briefed on PTSD back at the Garrison. He was sure that by the end of this war, him and the rest of the paladins might not be able think straight with how damaged their minds were. But it was things like this that if he thought about to hard, he would have a headache, or panic attack. So he still kept most of it inside his head, kept it all to himself.

Shiro was lonely most of the time. There was no one he was going to burden with all of his problems. He was a hypocrite, always telling the other paladins to open up and share their problems, never doing so himself.

Because it was lonely at the top, and even though Shiro didn't _want_ to be at the top, he was at the top.

And that may have been the worst part about it.

\------


End file.
